Rights Group Cites Backlog Of Complaints About Police

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

Published: November 15, 2006

The New York Civil Liberties Union said yesterday that the agency charged with investigating civilian complaints of police misconduct has allowed a backlog of cases to build up that could jeopardize the disciplinary process.

But a spokesman for the agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, disputed the criticism, saying that the civil liberties union misunderstood the way the agency does its work.

In a letter to the review board, the civil liberties union said that one review panel had not met between April and October 2005, allowing 800 cases of police misconduct allegations to build up.

When the panel met in October, the civil liberties union said, it disposed of more than 800 cases in one day.

''No matter how capable the members of the panel, it seems virtually impossible that over 800 cases could be meaningfully reviewed in one day,'' Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the civil liberties union, wrote in the letter to Franklin H. Stone, chairwoman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Mr. Dunn added that because any discipline or penalties must by imposed within 18 months of an incident, ''this creates the distinct possibility that officers escaped discipline simply because the board did not complete its work in a timely manner.''

But Andrew Case, a spokesman for the complaint review board, said yesterday that panel members had plenty of time to review cases before their meeting, which was used to discuss only the tiny percentage of cases in which they disagreed. None of the cases Mr. Dunn cited had been dismissed by the Police Department for exceeding the statute of limitations, Mr. Case said.

Mr. Case said that misconduct cases are first investigated by the board's full-time staff and are then forwarded to the panel members with a recommended disposition from the investigator.

The panel cited by Mr. Dunn, he said, disagreed with the staff recommendation in only 2.5 percent of its cases in 2005.

But Mr. Dunn said that even if the panel had enough time to review its cases, the long wait between meetings was a problem, because it reduced the amount of time that the Police Department had to review cases referred to it by the board.

Mr. Case said that the complaint board has four panels that meet 9 to 10 times a year, but that scheduling problems sometimes interfere with their ability to meet.

About 10 percent of the cases the panel is able to investigate are substantiated and passed on to the Police Department, Mr. Case said.

Mr. Case confirmed Mr. Dunn's observation that the number of allegations of police misconduct had been rising since 2003. But he attributed much of the increase to the use of the city's 311 hotline, which was established that year to handle questions and complaints about all kinds of issues. The nonemergency hotline has made it easier for people to report police misconduct, Mr. Case said.

Mr. Case said the rise in complaints was ''debatable as a pure indicator of misconduct.''